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Description

I'm going to implement Open Graph's meta tags to display content on my website properly in a Facebook feed.

In order to use this (source - https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/getting-started/) I have to create an application and add the Login Plugin to my website. I don't want to use either an app or Login Plugin - I don't need it at all and this will be only next problem to deal with.

On first look, some meta tags (http://ogp.me/) should work properly even without the app (subjectively my opinion), like these:

<meta property="og:title" content="The Rock" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/rock.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" 
  content="Sean Connery found fame and fortune as the
           suave, sophisticated British agent, James Bond." />

Although og:type might be problematic because it's an object from an app (as defined there).

Problem to solve

Is there any solution to implement og meta tags without creating an app and implementing the Login Plugin (without losing performance)?

If I have to fulfill those two steps, is it possible to implement the Login Plugin without allowing users to log into the site with it?

Additional notes

I will use mostly "Like Box" and "Like Plugin" for:

  • website in general,
  • posts on website.
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  • 1
    I see no one seems to ve any ideas. Or maybe that is because facebook questions are not popular enough.. I dont ve much time but I will investigate it further later. Try to implement Like and manage some meta tags. I will update my question notes if i will find something more.
    – Xarvalus
    Commented Nov 18, 2013 at 21:40

1 Answer 1

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Introduction

According to my comment from question I finally found some time to deal with this problem myself. After reading many articles, and auditing many other site's code I ve partial answer. Most of them are theoretically deduced from given sources. I will update this answer after full implementation of social content on my site which will happen in the next few days.

Anserw

Q: Is there any solution to implement og meta tags without creating an app and implementing the Login Plugin (without losing performance)?

A: This is possible. But owner lose some analytics from insight programm.

Quotes from link: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/checklist/, https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/creating-object-types/.

fb:app_id

The unique ID that lets Facebook know the identity of your site. This is crucial for Facebook Insights to work properly.

og:type

The object type for this object - to see what the type is for your og:type, go to the Open Graph section of the App Dashboard, click on Types, choose your object type and check the Open Graph Type field under the Advanced section. Note that once an object's type is set and has been used in a story that its type can not be changed. For a list of built-in types, please see our list of common open graph object types.

After registering website as app in facebook we may toggle insight analytics for this. Otherwise we can not get data about likes/shares etc. from domain strictly. But this is only advantage of this kind solution which I encountered.

For tag type we may use predefined objects list https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/opengraph/object-type in result it can be also implemented without app.


Q: If I have to fulfill those two steps, is it possible to implement the Login Plugin without allowing users to log into the site with it?

A: Yes it is.

After this step we may integrate our website like facebook app and insight analytics also but it wont give any profits if we wont allow users to log in site with it. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/insights/:

App Insights

To build the best possible experience for people using your app, use Insights to track how its being used. For app administrators, Insights includes feedback for stream stories, referral traffic to your app, a breakdown of the actions that contribute to active user count, demographics on authorized users and active users and the number of times permissions are prompted and granted. Detailed Insights on Open Graph activity for your app are also available. In addition, Insights provides diagnostics for your app so you can track API errors as well as get access to allocations and throttling information.

People who have not granted permissions to your app are not considered active users, but they're counted in other metrics such as impression data.

This data will be build from people who 'liked' your app/page - it wont give any viable statistics if noone can reach it.

Live Examples

My link:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?action=like&show_faces=false&share=true&domain=kwejk.pl&href=http://kwejk.pl/obrazek/1952891/&node_type=link

Original link:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?action=like&api_key=565589606823878&channel_url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.ak.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter.php%3Fversion%3D28%23cb%3Df2a3883e08%26domain%3Dkwejk.pl%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fkwejk.pl%252Ff3423111e%26relation%3Dparent.parent&colorscheme=light&extended_social_context=false&font=arial&href=http%3A%2F%2Fkwejk.pl%2Fobrazek%2F1952891&layout=button_count&locale=pl_PL&node_type=link&sdk=joey&show_faces=false&width=130

Outputs are the same and works identically both on response and facebook feed.

Conclusion

This is solution for my problem directly, if you are not intrested in you may do not read this paragraph

My goal was to implement (fast and simple) facebook like and like box for my website which is highly based on user created content. In the scenario from this answer I ve only to fetch proper url to 'like' in iframe tag, and facebook script will get all data from og: which can be reached within href= parameter. Only disadvantage may be lack of analytics, but these likes are only for user purposes, because I will create Facebook Page for my site, where I will post random user content - from this point I will use insight analytics.

I ve both implemented social content on site and basic statistics about my content on social site. Also if only I will want in future remake it to app with SDK etc. It is still achievable and I wont lose any performance or data from this purpose.

Btw. Thats a pity Webmasters dont ve many experts in Facebook developing, or at least are not very keen on to share their knowledge :<

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